Harrell's Budget Plan Uses Affordable-Housing Tax to Fund Police, Jails, Sweeps, —and Downtown Beautification

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Bruce Harrell announced a 2025-2026 budget proposal on Tuesday that avoids major cuts (and adds funding for Harrell's priorities, like police and homeless encampment removals) by repurposing a majority of the JumpStart payroll expense tax to fill what would have otherwise been at least a $260 million budget deficit.

The budget will cut 159 positions, including 76 that are currently filled. However, thanks largely to hundreds of millions of "extra" funding from the JumpStart tax, it also preserves funding for the Equitable Development Initiative, saves a men's shelter in the Central District that would otherwise have closed, and preserves existing hours at libraries, community centers, and senior centers.

Under current law, JumpStart funds, which come from an employer tax on the wages of highly-compensated workers, are supposed to be allocated to four broad spending categories: Affordable housing, small businesses, equitable development, and the Green New Deal. Last year, the council increased the tax slightly to create a separate bucket of about $20 million for student mental health programs—of which Harrell's budget preserves about $15 million.

The council passed JumpStart in 2020 over the vociferous objections of business groups like the Seattle Metro Chamber, which sued to stop it, and the Downtown Seattle Association; a separate spending plan established how JumpStart revenues could be spent. The city has repeatedly used some JumpStart revenues to backfill the general fund, which pays for most city services. But the mayor's proposal represents a wholesale raid on this funding source—one that goes far beyond anything the previous council or mayor ever publicly contemplated.

Under Harrell's plan, $287 million in JumpStart revenues will go into the general fund next year (and $233 million in 2026), and another $43 million will go into a reserve fund in case revenues come in lower than expected in the future. In 2025, just $233 million would be available for designated JumpStart priorities. 

During a media briefing on Tuesday, City Budget Office director Dan Eder didn't provide a specific justification for pouring more than half of JumpStart revenues into the general fund, except that the tax have been producing more money than anticipated. In other words, we have a deficit over here, the money is over there, so why not use that money to fix this unrelated problem? And—while we're at it—why not change the law to allow us to do that every year?

Harrell's budget makes this pretty explicit, noting that "The City can avoid making additional reductions to critical municipal services for those who live, work, and visit Seattle by making the 'extra' payroll tax revenues available to the General Fund."

Of course, there are opportunity costs to not spending a windfall on the things it's supposed to be spent on—housing, for instance, is not getting any cheaper to build, and doubling the amount the city can invest in housing now would benefit the city and its taxpayers in the long term.

And there's something a bit unsavory about leaders who opposed the JumpStart tax—including the Chamber, which issued a rapturous press release praising Harrell for his JumpStart-dependent budget—celebrating its conversion into a slush fund that the city can use for any purpose. 

But that's where we are. The council, and Harrell, have vowed to address structural budget issues without raising taxes, so the tax many of them opposed will now provide a nearly-blank check to fund everything from World Cup festivities to the expansion of the mayor's encampment removal team. Here are a few items that jumped out on my initial perusal of the budget.

Money for Police, Encampment Sweeps

The mayor's budget would fund nearly 1,900 positions in SPD, including many that will remain unfilled, and increase the department's overall budget from $393 million this year to $454 million in 2025. The fire department and Community Assisted Response and Engagement Team will also see increases—allowing the team's unarmed responders to expand to a wider geographic area—and the overall "public safety" bucket will now amount to just about half percent of the general-fund, or discretionary, budget. 

Most of that spending increase ($46 million) will pay for raises the police union bargained earlier this year. About $2.5 million will pay to staff the Real-Time Crime Center and CCTV cameras I covered on Tuesday. SPD will spend another $10 million on emphasis patrols in the areas "where crime is concentrated," which generally overlap with both the CCTV surveillance zones and the new drug and sex work exclusion areas, where police will have the power to arrest anyone under a "stay out" order.

The Unified Care Team (UCT), which removes encampments and informs their displaced residents about available shelter beds, will get 11 new employees from various departments, expanding the team to 32 members and allowing it to remove encampments and respond to calls seven days a week. The mayor's budget highlights this new spending under "Race and Social Justice Initiatives."

In his budget speech on Tuesday, Harrell said the UCT "has made a significant difference for the people of Seattle, housed and unhoused," and claimed that his administration has "decreased tent encampments by 72 percent since I took office, and increased shelter referrals incredibly."

Data indicates that homelessness in Seattle has not declined, and a referral to shelter does not mean a person arrives at shelter, stays there for any length of time, or receives housing or other services that would enable them to exit homelessness.

Repurposing JumpStart

JumpStart, as I mentioned, will now be used for all sorts of things that have nothing to do with its original purpose. 

Historically, changing the spending plan for an earmarked tax has been quite controversial—in 2017, for instance, the council ended an attempt by then-mayor Jenny Durkan to siphon away funds from the sweetened beverage tax by legislating a spending plan with a veto-proof majority. Now, an otherwise anti-tax council has indicated their eagerness to change the underlying law and turn JumpStart into an all-purpose money spigot.

In addition to spending JumpStart revenues on "critical General Fund obligations (like police, parks, fire, transportation, etc.)", the budget will use the tax to fund mayoral priorities like the Downtown Activation Plan, planning for the 2026 World Cup (which will include six games over three weeks, plus related activities downtown), staffing for Sound Transit 3 planning, EV charging infrastructure, and upgrades to downtown parks.

Few of these "JumpStart" projects fit into the original categories of affordable housing, Green New Deal jobs, and equitable development. All of these original categories will still get funding—the Equitable Development Initiative, for example, will actually grow slightly—but Harrell's budget also directs millions of dollars of dedicated JumpStart funding to his pet projects downtown, including:

• A two-year, $3.7 million "revitalization of Westlake Plaza which could include removal of out-of-commission fountain, stage renovation, an electrical systems upgrade, and repairs to paving and trip hazards"; 

• $1 million for Seattle Restored, the downtown storefront revitalization fund;

• $186,000 for "center city park activations";

• $2.6 million in spending for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, including $265,000 for a coordinator to oversee World Cup activities in the downtown area, $365,000 for a two-person team that will "respond to anticipated increased demand in the biennium, including for events related to the 2026 World Cup," and another $2 million "in reserve" to plan for the six-game, three-week event’

• $350,000 to upgrade the downtown monorail station;

• $1.5 million to fund graffiti removal, business outreach, a "safe walk service," and cleaning in downtown Seattle;

• $ 1 million to "support public space activations, public space improvements, and a centralized [Downtown Activation Plan] communications strategy; and

• $250,000 for a consultant to advise on the "major public investments" that are planned for SoDo, which include a new civic center, housing, and a relocated jail on land largely owned by developer Greg Smith.

First Comes Arrest, then Comes Incarceration

In addition to $10 million for overtime for cops to patrol "emphasis" areas; in addition to establishing remote, 24/7 surveillance of neighborhoods across the city; in addition to increasing the police (and fire) budget dramatically, the city also plans to spend millions of dollars on new jail beds to put people arrested for misdemeanors, including newly created misdemeanors like public drug use and prostitution loitering.

The budget includes almost $3 million for the city to rent 20 jail beds at the SCORE jail in Kent, plus an additional $2 million (rising to $2.7 million in 2026) for additional misdemeanor beds at the downtown Seattle jail. The city recently announced an agreement with King County to open up more jail beds for people who commit low-level misdemeanors throughout the city.

Incidentally, the proposed county budget, introduced by King County Executive Dow Constantine on Monday, includes $1.725 million to finish installing "jump barriers" and replacing bunks to make it harder for inmates to commit suicide. In the last 18 months, at least seven people have died in custody at SCORE.

The city's municipal court has told the city that it will need extra funding for additional judges and staff to handle first appearance cases for the inmates held at SCORE and the downtown jail, plus the expected flood of misdemeanor sex work, drug use, and SOAP/SODA violation cases. But Harrell's budget includes no new funding for the court. 

The budget also includes an $18 million increase to the city's judgments and claims fund, which pays for legal claims and lawsuits against the city. For several years, the city has consistently lost more lawsuits and legal claims than budget planners anticipated.

So What About All Those New Services the City Has Promised?

As the mayor, council, and city attorney have doubled down on arrests and incarceration as the city's primary response to low-level crime and "disorder," they've consistently reassured the public that these measures are just the "stick" portion of a well-thought-out plan that will also include many "carrots"—investments in new services for the people targeted by police and judicial crackdowns.

These services were supposed to include new drug treatment programs; new shelter for people living outdoors; new funding for mental health services; and assistance for people in the sex trade who could soon be arrested for "prostitution loitering." 

Not only does the budget not deliver on these promised services (save for a vaguely described $2 million investment in services for victims of human trafficking, which does nothing for non-trafficked sex workers), it cuts many of the services people rely on to stay afloat. While funding for police continues to skyrocket, many small but important programs are being cut due to a purported lack of funds. 

A small sample:

• The Department of Neighborhoods’ Food Equity Fund will fund three to five fewer programs to address food inequity each year.

• The Farm to Child program, which provides fresh produce to  in-home family childcare providers, will be eliminated.

• Parks maintenance outside downtown, along with activation programs in non-downtown parks, will be cut.

• The Parks CommUNITY fund, a new program that funds community-led parks projects in underserved neighborhoods, will be cut from $2.5 million to $1.5 million. 

• Programming at Carkeek and Discovery Parks will be eliminated, along with seven staff positions, and could be replaced by unspecified "public-private partnerships."

• Funding for legal assistance for low-income people, including legal counsel for homeless youth and children and representation for people challenging adverse decisions on public assistance, will be eliminated, along with free tax preparation help provided by the United Way, a call center to help older adults and their caregivers access services to help them stay in their homes, and the Culturally Nourishing Food program for seniors.

In general, the city council has been extremely supportive of Harrell's agenda; their changes will likely be at the margins, rather than wholesale strategic shifts or major reappropriations. The council's budget committee will kick off the fall budget process with a meeting at City Hall at 9:30 Wednesday morning.